My Learning Styles

As one of the activities from this week was to complete the 'Felder and Solomon Learning Styles Questionaire'.  Below are my results:

(Retrieved from Felder & Solomon 2011)

What is your learning style?
As you can see on my results, I am 'well balanced' in the learning areas of Reflective and Sequential styles.  I 'moderately' prefer the Visual learning style; and I very muchly prefer the Intuitive style of learning.  For me this means that I like to have pictures, diagrams, colours, lists, summaries, concept maps, logical and sequential orders of things.

What sorts of learning experiences would suit you best with your learning style?
So, as an Intuitive-Visual learner, I prefer lectures and classes that a lot of University courses provide.  Also classes that involve a number of visual aids like movies help me and engage me best.  For example, for me to better learn, I need someone teaching me, I struggle to do tasks and to learn by myself, the self-paced learning, do-it-yourself style learning that many courses offer, means that I struggle to learn and understand the concepts and subject material that I am required to know.  Though I have learnt that there are strategies that I can use when studying and learning things by myself, such as highlighting important points and information and by using concept maps, flow charts, lists and other visual aids that I can create to understand material.

In a traditional classroom of 25 students, how would you support the range of learning styles in each lesson?
Obviously I will have to get to know each student and their individual learning styles.  In order to support each students learning styles and their own learning journies, I will have to provide visual and auditory materials, such as hand outs, video clips, music, pictures, board work - done by myself and also by the students, and general discussions.  I will also have to provide students with a number of different style learning activities that are explained in a number of different ways, these activities may include individual work where the students need to find the 'answers' as such by themselves and then report back to either a partner or to the group as a whole, group work where each group may have a different task and each group will have to report back to the whole class so that everyone can get some idea of the topic at hand, whole group discussions where I may choose to ask students what they already know and what they may want to know, but by also getting students to somewhat 'run' the whole group discussions by having them ask questions or write down responses on the whiteboard for example.  There are so many different strategies that I can use as a teacher to engage each and every one of my students and to address each of the different learning styles in the classroom.

With your current knowledge of ICT, how could your design and digital pedagogy support your learners better?
I will be able to show my students how they can find and locate various information and materials that may be useful in assisting them to understand subject content and that may prove helpful when they are completing assessment items.  I will also be able to show them pictures, photos, diagrams, maps, play them music, various movies, internet clips and video clips to assist me in getting my 'point' or 'points' across to the group.  In doing this I hope to help the students better engage, understand and relate to the topics being taught, in different ways.

What sorts of profiling questions would you be asking about your learners to ensure you cater for everyone's preferences?

• Who likes looking at pictures, diagrams etc?
• Who likes to listen to me or other people talk?
• Who prefers to look at or associate information or notes with different colours to help the understand?
• Who likes to watch movies or moving clips that capture the topic and the content?
• Who likes or prefers their information and task steps set out in lists/sequential steps?
• Who likes to work in a group?
• Who prefers to work alone?
• Who likes discussions and sharing what they know with others?
• Who likes to get involved with other peoples learning journies?

How does ICT support differences in learning styles?
ICTs can provide students with different ways in which they can view, hear and take in new and even old content.  Students can self-evaluate what they have learnt and know what they are capable of.  Not only can ICTs support the individual learners, but ICTs can also support small groups and whole classes as well.

Reference:
Felder, R.M., & Solomon, B. 2011. Learning styles test. (online). http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html.